Overwatch Lucio Strategy Guide

by Hypocritical_Midget

If you prefer to learn things in a video format over text, here’s a link to practically EVERYTHING BELOW Which I Go Over in about 10 Minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9LdHZ2n9hY There’s also timestamps embedded throughout the video so you can skip to the bits which are useful to you.

Without further adieu, let’s get onto the guide!

Lúcio is armed with a sonic amplifier that shoots green projectiles that travel at 50m/s, deal 20 damage, and are shot in a 4 round burst (Hence dealing 80 Damage if all rounds hit the desired target). Lúcio receives 5 of these bursts in one clip (Hence 20 shots in total) taking just under a second to fire a burst.

N.B. You can CANCEL a burst mid way using melee, although I don’t see the use of this.

• This actually IS NOT The FIRST THING You Should Learn to Master if you’re below 3K unlike Moira
• In Reality, Lucio’s Primary Fire is one of the LAST Things you should master; This is because you can still be a fantastic Lucio utilising the songs correctly without needing great aim
• With that being said, if you play a bit of genji, Lucio’s fire is somewhat similar in the sense that you have to constantly adjust your aim
• In combination with your boop ability, you have the ability to oneshot any 200HP Character in the game by landing 4 Headshots, then a boop followed by a melee
• If you learn to master your sonic amplifier, you have the ability to freely contest highground, and confidently take duels against DPS Players. I will get onto this concept more in-depth, and the benefits to why you should aim to take highground, specifically/especially on defense
• Other than that, the Primary Fire acts as decent spam; However if you are constantly spamming the enemy shield without gaining any value from your speed boost, you might as well be playing zen due to the sheer amount of shield break he brings to the team

Lúcio’s 1st ability is Crossfade, in which he plays one of two songs which either heals your teammates for 16 HPS, or provides a speed buff on 25% in a radius of 12 meters. I will also group ‘Amp it Up,’ in this section, which accentuates either songs to do 52 HPS to teammates, or a speed buff of 60% lasting 3 seconds.

N.B. The heal song is 12.3 HPS To Lucio Himself, and 40 HPS When he Amps it Up.

• This is the most important thing for a Lucio to master before he moves onto to other areas of his kit
• BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION: Crossfade is a SPHERE, not a CIRCLE. This means that you can stay on highgrounds that aren’t beyond the 12 meter radius EG The Highground Opposite Café on Hollywood Defense First Point whilst healing.
• You can create quite the unpredictable movements by switching songs constantly, alongside some AD strafing and crouching. Note that just spamming AD on your keyboard will actually make you MORE predictabe, so instead of ‘AD AD AD AD’ do ‘AD DD AA AD’ (IE Lean/Press either key for a longer period of time than the other, then immediately swap key when you think the enemy have a shot lined up to jebait them)
• You can also get hacked out of crossfade, and the speed increase from crossfade stacks with Wall ride

Building Upon These Ideas: When To Speed?

• In The Middle of Rotating
• If your team is Full HP
• If/When Your team gets a pick making the fight a 6v5 (Use AMP if available)
• If your Reinhardt requests speed w/bubble to push in (Use AMP if available)
• Creating unpredictable movement
• Peeling for you support to escape danger ASAP/Reach a Health Pack (Depending on your win condition IE If You need Nanoboost to win the teamfight, DEFINITELY Use AMP if available)

Building Upon These Ideas: When To Heal?

• In the middle of a graviton surge (Use AMP if available)
• When in mid-air, USE THE HEAL SONG. You don’t lose momentum and you inject healing every now and then. It doesn’t sound like much (but it’s honest work)
• If teammates are already brawling ontop of the enemy team, and they’re aren’t kiting from danger, feel inclined to AMP up healing. This is especially enforced if the enemy team can’t retreat.
• Your team is waiting at choke for whoever to comeback from spawn to engage as a 6v6 (Try not to use AMP as you ideally want to speed past choke)
• AoE Damage EG Ashe Dynamite; Although if you’re moving through choke, stay on speed.

N.B. DO NOT AMP SPEED OUT OF SPAWN. This mostly goes for players <2500, but in essence, don’t do this. Main reason being it’s effectively racing to reach a traffic light at red. Save AMP at choke so your team can be most efficient saving shield resource. From experience racking up hours as Reinhardt, it’s frustrating walking through choke only to realise my Lucio hasn’t got AMP left.

N.B. 2 DO NOT swap between Speed and Heal when AMP-ing through choke to heal poke damage. This is to allow your Ana/Moira to build their ultimates, and can confuse your Reinhardt/Main Tank in whether you’re engaging or not.

3) Lucio’s 3rd ability is a soundwave which boops enemies in an 8 meter range dealing 25 damage on a 4 second cooldown consuming 0 ammo.

Simple: Boop Enemies Off the Map (Easier said than done, but conceptually, this is what most people try to do) or finish off Low HP enemies when you have 0 Ammo remaining

Advanced: Boop Enemies Off of the Highground when taking duels that simply aren’t in your favour. For instance, when dueling a pocketed hitscan, splitting up the DPS from the Mercy wastes time and resources, effectively taking out the enemy for a few seconds. Also bare in mind the 200 HP Combo which you can do.

‘Super’ Advanced: Boop enemies away from your support when they are being dove. I have ‘Super,’ in air quotes as it’s not that difficult to pull off, although mastering and booping in grace periods are quite difficult to pull off. EG Up against a Dragonblade; When the Genji SLASHES, then BOOP as the RoF of the slash won’t be quick enough to slash you in time.

MEGA Advanced: Learn rollouts with your wallride to boop enemies off of highground (EG Dorado First Point Attack, wallride from the top door spawn on the left side of the wall, to ontop of the roof to boop down tanks to the low ground) or to thread the needle and push the tanks beyond their shields to chain stun them with a McCree Flash, Brig Bash, Orisa Halt, or Hog Hook.

N.B. Note that characters like D.V.A. or Orisa have movement penalties when shooting, hence when the boop does LESS KNOCKBACK against these enemies at these points. To overcome this, wait Orisa to reload/when you think she’s about to reload, then drop from the skies, or perform some wall riding to get an angle to boop them off the map or into your team. EG On Nepal Sanctum, you can wall ride very high above the point and beyond POV of the enemy team, hence do the above to maximise knockback effect.

4) Lucio’s passive is a wall ride granting him 30% added speed, and receives a small burst of speed boost when detaching from the wall

For this I’m simply not going to waste your time or my time. This is easily the most complex piece of Lucio’s kit which is easy to get into, but hard to master. Check THIS Pinned Post showing you the CONCISE yet IN DEPTH Intricacies of Wall riding!

If you don’t have time for that, the two key basics are:

• The higher you look up whilst wall riding, the further you will travel in a vertical direction
• You can stack the speed burst you receive at the end of a wallride by ‘wall skimming’ (Immediately wallriding then jumping off immediately afterwards)

Lucio’s Ultimate, sound barrier, gives all allies around him a temporary 750 shields which decay automatically at a rate of 125 Shields per Second. The radius for this to be applied is 30 Meters (In comparison, Zen Discord and Harmony are 40 meter ranges).

N.B. There is a ‘GRACE PERIOD’ to this soundbarrier, in where 0.5 seconds after you beat, you can still apply it to an ally IF THEY ARE IN L.O.S. (Line of Sight). There is also a cast time of 0.72 seconds in which you can get stunned

N.B.2 The enemy team still gains ult charge from shooting Lucio Temporary shields, whereas Hammond temporary shields DO NOT give ult charge. Just something to bare in mind; Where you don’t have to take unnecessary damage because you have added HP

Simple: Beat against graviton surges, dragonblades, dragon strikes etc.

Advanced: Use beat AGGRESSIVELY to allow your tanks to, well, tank damage through choke. This is especially important in 2CP Maps where your tanks are too afraid to push forward. This is also especially powerful if the enemy team aren’t running Zarya, Sigma or Reinhardt.

Super Advanced: Time your beat against burst damage such as RIP Tire or Nanoblade. Easier said than done. Ontop of this, CONSTANTLY Wall Ride if the enemy team’s win condition is Earthshatter and your Reinhardt can’t doesn’t block it. This is exactly what the Vancouver Titans did back in the Goats Meta where Bumper would constantly get bailed out by the great peel from Slime or Twilight (RIP OLD VANCOUVER). Also, hide in cover to beat against SOMBRA EMP. More reliable than Zen due to the increased range and Lucio is much less of a glass cannon.

MEGA Advanced: Just because you BEAT doesn’t mean you automatically SURVIVE. For example, back in the goats era, some Lucio’s in OWL wouldn’t beat into a graviton surge since the temporary shields would get bursted through in a short period of time. Building on this concept to know WHEN to beat into a Grav instead of BLINDLY beating for no reason:

• What is the enemy team win condition? If it’s barrage grav, or some crazy High damage combo, DO NOT Bother Using Beat
• If you’re in a 5v6 or 4v6 and you have lost your win condition (EG Your win condition is Grav Surge but your Zarya dies) don’t bother beating into the enemy grav because even if you survive, your team would have already lost the fight anyway
• Conversely, don’t be afraid to beat a single target if it preserves your win condition EG Solo Beating a Mercy using resurrect to bring a Zarya or Rein Back to life to use their ultimates.

(Not so) Quick Tid Bit on Positioning:
So I’ve mentioned prior that controlling highgrounds are key to winning a teamfight (EG The Hollywood Opposite Cafe example) but WHY are they so vital to control? Well, here’s a short list of reasons:

1. Scouting Information

• Going on Highground allows you to gain a vertical sightline, then relay the information back to your team
• This allows your team to either rotate to a position to where they are within ideal range for a brawl/poke depending on how far/close the enemy team are holding
• If you manage to land a few shots on the enemy backline support, a callout such as ‘Zen half by Cafe’ tells your DPS to engage and duel the Zen in Café

1. Applies Backline Pressure

• Similar to the last bulletpoint in such that their Zenyatta/Backline Support have now drawn their attention away from the frontline and towards YOU
• This gives more space and relays pressure from your frontline and decreases shield break IE Decreases Frontline Resources
• Building on the previous bulletpoint, you can force enemy cooldowns such as Coach Gun or Dva Boosters to force you off the highground which can be countered by Lucio’s Boop

1. Lowers Chance That Enemy DPS Make Big Play

• Just by you existing on the highground (Use Hollywood 1st Point as context) you automatically deny their Ashe from going to the highground and landing a massive dynamite on your entire team

1. You simultaneously heal/apply your song effect

• Like I said, It’s a sphere not a circle

Backline Synergy:

• Lucio Moira: Great Brawl Potential. A bit of communication from both of you to stay on speed boost in order to charge and use coalescence as your win condition is extremely powerful in ranked. Try and find a flex support player in ranked and do this in enclosed maps (EG Kings Row, Busan Mekabase)
• Lucio Zen: Ah, remember Season 3? The good ol’ days of Lucio Zen Dive, back when I was plat… It’s not really reliable nowadays unless you’re running GOATS In Competitive Open Queue when it comes back in mid June and Early July. Main reason being that there’s a lot of added burst damage in forms of Doomfist and Wrecking Ball that a Lucio Speed Boost or Boop won’t do much unless the Doom exhausts all cooldowns to even reach the Zen. Not to mention the low amount of healing in which your tanks need to play perfectly in which we know in ranked, they’re not going to do
• Lucio Brig: A surprisingly good alternative for Lucio Moira. Main difference being a slightly reduced level of healing in trade for CC. As Brig won’t need much peeling, you can also be allowed to go more aggressive to contest further away highgrounds
• Lucio Mercy: Same concept in the sense that you don’t need to peel. But if your main tanks are crying because they’re not getting any healing, don’t be surprised… (This is because the Mercy will be pocketing/enabling her DPS rather than healing tanks otherwise Moira is more suited for that job)
• Lucio Bap: An interesting hybrid of a Poke support mixed with a typically brawly support. Not optimised for one specific playstyle, hence either run Lucio Moira or Zen Bap unless it’s map dependant to run Lucio in place for Zen. Immortality can also act as a walmart sound barrier if placed well.
• Lucio Ana: Perhaps the most optimised support duo made for the highest levels. Not a low skill floor but certainly the highest technical skill cap amongst all the other duos. You need to balance peeling as Lucio effectively (Similar with Lucio bap as well) in order to allow your Ana to survive. If the enemy team are running a full out Dive, run Anti Dive with Brig Ana or Brig Moira.

That’s it for the guide! Thank You SO MUCH For Reading This Far AND For the last Moira Guide Post Which received such a positive reception!

This might get lost in New, it might not, but I hope this helps ATLEAST ONE Person in this community because if it has, I’ve done my job.

Feel free to share any added tips in the comments below to help anyone reading them, and also feel free to ask ANY Question about the game!